


Moral of the Story

by Dredfulhapiness



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24034399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: “Come on!” he urged. “We need to take a shortcut.”“You’re Spider-Man,” Flash said, distraught.“We need to go.” Peter hauled him up.(Or, the one where Flash finds out)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Flash Thompson
Comments: 13
Kudos: 245





	Moral of the Story

Peter spent the summer after high school knowing it was one of the last times he’d be able to work with Tony for a while. Usually, that meant Tony regularly checking in to make sure that he’d made every adjustment to his suit that he’d needed to. 

Unfortunately, he also spent a decent chunk of the summer working alongside Flash. 

He’d been hired by Pepper, who apparently had no knowledge of his overall disposition and Peter didn’t feel comfortable saying “pull the trigger” when Tony had offered to rescind the opportunity. Plus, with Harley going back to Tennessee every other week they needed the help and Peter knew Flash was smart enough to work at Stark. So he’d just shrugged. 

“I’ve been playing nice for four years,” he said. “What’s a few more months?” 

And Flash  _ was  _ smart enough to keep up with Stark Industries. He’d always been better at math and engineering than Peter, and this was no exception. Save for his unnecessary competitiveness (and overall Flash-ness), he was a great person to work with. He worked smart  _ and  _ hard, he finished the work he was supposed to, and he had some great ideas.

He was just… Flash. 

But, whatever. 

Peter just had to start working on his suit after hours, or on weekends when Harley was in town. 

It was one of Peter’s last weeks in New York when the alarm system rang in the middle of the day. Just outside the lab door, Tony and Harley paused and turned their gaze upward. Peter looked up at one of the monitors. 

“Friday, what’s going on?” 

“It appears the tower is under attack, Peter.” 

“Attack?” Flash asked, and his eyes were wide. “What do you mean under attack?” 

“You got any more information for me, Friday?” 

Peter caught Harley’s eye through the glass of the door. Harley shrugged. Behind him, Tony had his phone pressed to his ear, thumbnail in his mouth.

“As a matter of fact--” Instead of Friday finishing her sentence, the audio system let out a screech. 

Peter threw his hands over his ears. 

“The system’s down!” Harley poked his head into the lab and yelled to be heard over the grinding scream of the intercom.

“No shit!” Peter shot back. “What do we know?”

“They landed on the roof!”

“Again!?” 

Behind him, Flash was uncharicteristically silent. 

“We’re gonna go check it out,” Harley said, which was code for,  _ we’re going to try to go fight them _ . 

Peter made a face. “Why don’t I come with you?”

Harley shook his head. “Stay with Flash,” he said, we’re gonna--”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Around them, the whole building shook. 

“Great,” Peter heard Tony remark. He made eye contact with Peter over Harley’s shoulder. “Peter, get him out of here!” 

“On it!” Peter grabbed Flash’s wrist. “C’mon,” he said. “Follow me.” 

Harley pulled out of the doorframe.

“What’s going on?” Flash asked as Peter led him, rushing, out of the lab. “Where are we going?”

“Aliens,” Peter said. “Or robots, maybe. I don’t know, we’re getting you out of the building.” Then, to himself, “If they’ve gotten to Friday they’re in the system… We can’t take the elevator.”

“What?” Flash asked. “We’re on the thirtieth floor!” 

“Remember running bleachers in gym?” Peter asked. “It’s just that.” And he pulled them into the stairwell. 

Normally, Peter would just drop down. Actually, normally, Peter would suit up and join Tony and Harley, but they had a good streak right now of interns not getting killed and Peter didn’t want to have to put a fat zero on the sign. Also, as much as Flash got on his nerves, Peter didn’t want him to die. He’d been the one to convince Tony that it would be  _ fine  _ having him intern here and he didn’t want that on his conscience. Also, saving people was what he did. 

They were five flights of stairs down, and Flash was slowing down, when Peter heard the door to the stairwell slam open above them. He grabbed Flash’s arm and urged him to speed up.

The door on the landing below them opened. They were stuck.

“Shit,” Peter breathed. The footsteps above them were getting closer, and right below them were three different aliens, tall and mutated, and armed. Armed to the teeth (if they had any, that is).

Peter put his hands up, pulled Flash’s wrist up with him. “Hey, guys,” he said with a nervous laugh. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Identify yourselves,” the leader of the group in front of them said. The group above them was getting closer, only a flight away. Peter stared at the space on the helmet where he assumed their eyes were. He opened his mouth to answer. Flash beat him to it.

“We’re just interns! We don’t know anything!”

“You work for Tony Stark?” The alien asked. His voice was robotic, like he was using a text-to-speech translator. 

Again, Peter breathed in to respond. Again, Flash blurted out, “Yes?”

“Dude!” Peter scolded.

“They could be useful,” the alien decided. “Get them.” 

The group behind them started running. The group in front of them aimed their guns.

“Fuck,” Peter groaned in resignation. He grit his teeth and made a decision. “Sorry, Flash!”

“What?” Flash managed to get out before Peter swiped a foot across his legs and pushed him back. Flash fell back with a cry. A beam of light occupied the space where Flash’s head had occupied.

Peter shot a web at the top of the staircase above them, creating a thin wall of web between them and the upcoming horde of aliens. 

“I really wish you guys hadn’t said that,” Peter said. “I don’t have time to--” he just barely jumped out of the way of a laser. He shot another web, yanked the gun out of an alien’s hand and caught it. “Wow, this is heavy. Are guns usually this heavy?” 

A laser shot dangerously close to where Flash was pushing himself up onto his elbows. 

“Stay down!” Peter warned.

Peter spared a glance behind him. The aliens were at the webbing now. The group in front of him were still firing. He launched himself up and stuck to the bottom of the staircase above him.

“Hey! Up here!” He hucked the gun like it was a boomerang. It hit two of the aliens below him in the head. There was one left upright, and the group behind him was close to breaking through the webbing he’d put up (he really needed a way to make it laser-proof). 

At the same moment they dropped, Peter felt the familiar churn in his stomach, then heard the unmistakable sound of doors closing below them. 

There were more coming up the stairwell. 

Peter added another layer of webbing behind him and prayed that it would be enough to buy him thirty seconds. 

They had to have been on the twentieth floor by now. Peter wasn’t going to be able to take on all of these guys at once, not by himself. He dropped down to the ground and grabbed Flash’s wrist. 

“Come on!” he urged. “We need to take a shortcut.” 

“You’re Spider-Man,” Flash said, distraught.

“We need to  _ go _ .” Peter hauled him up. He could easily lift him if he’d needed to, but that would eat up more time than pulling Flash behind him. “We’re going to the garden!” he called behind him.

“That’s a dead-end!” Flash yelled. Peter shook his head. They burst through the door, onto the patio. There was a chest-height fence around the perimeter. 

“You trust me?” Peter asked.

_ “What?”  _ Flash was staring behind them, through the glass door. They were being rushed. 

“I need you to trust me,” Peter corrected.  _ “Now.”  _

He wrapped an arm around Flash’s chest and, in a single motion, threw them over the side of the balcony. 

The sound of the wind in his ears did nothing to stifle Flash’s scream. Peter pushed the button on his web-shooters. His suit covered his body. Peter counted the windows. At the tenth floor, he aimed a web at a balcony. At the fifth floor, he’d slowed them to a near halt. At the first floor, Flash opened his eyes. Peter urged Flash away from the building.

“You need to go home,” Peter said. 

“You’re Spider-Man,” Flash said. “What the  _ fuck?  _ You’re Spider-Man?” His eyes bulged. His hands were trembling. 

“I don’t have time to talk about this right now, Flash,” Peter said, already regretting his decision. It sat like a pit in his stomach. “Go  _ home.”  _

\--

They didn’t get rid of the aliens until nearly seven. Peter’s forehead was drenched in sweat when he pulled his cowl away. Harley’s face was scratched, and he smelled like singed hair. 

“Can you clean up?” Peter asked him. “I have to go take care of something.”

“Only if you buy me dinner before you leave for Massachusetts.”

“Pick somewhere cheap,” Peter said, “and you’ve got a deal. I’ll be back soon.” 

\--

Peter’s stomach was in knots as he waited for someone to answer the door. He played with the bandage on his arm, from where an alien bullet had grazed him. He’d forced himself to stop at home for a shower before making his way over, but the passage of time had just made his anxiety worse.

What if Flash had already told people? Peter should have checked Twitter before coming, or local news, or Instagram, maybe. Flash may have been live. After all, he’d just been saved by Spider-Man and wouldn’t it be a huge news story if he told all his followers  _ who  _ Spider-Man is and Peter was about to turn around and leave when the door opened and he was face-to-face with Flash. 

“You’re okay,” Flash said, and he sounded relieved. “The news said there’d been casualties, and I wasn’t sure if--”

Peter nodded, jaw tight. “Yeah, I’m fine. Can we-- can we talk?”

“Uh-- right, yeah. Of course. You can…” He opened the door and stepped out of the way. 

“Thanks.” Peter stepped into the ornate foyer. The tile was fancy. The staircase was rounded. There was a chandelier above his head. There was a long silence.

“Listen,” Peter started at the same time Flash said, “Look.”

They both fell quiet again. 

Flash said quickly. “I just… have a lot of questions.”

“I figured. Is there anywhere we could…”

“No one’s home,” Flash assured. “My parents are out of town and it’s the housekeeper’s day off.” He led him into the living room, though. 

Peter looked around again. There were no pictures on the walls, just art. It felt cold, all white and clean and sterile. The home was huge-- too big to be in alone-- and he bit the inside of his cheek. 

“So... the whole time...” Flash managed.

“Yep. The whole time.” 

“Dude, I’m so, so--”

“If you’re about to apologize for being a dick just because you found out I’m famous I’m gonna have to deck you again,” Peter said, bolder than he’d expected of himself. Maybe it was the four years of assholery he’d been forced to endure. Maybe it was because he was going away to college in three weeks. But Peter wasn’t looking for an apology. Peter didn’t  _ need  _ an apology. He never really had. Ever since he’d been bitten he’d had bigger things on his plate than Flash mocking the number of digits in his bank statement. He’d been to  _ space  _ for god’s sake, forcing an apology out of Flash was like going out of his way to ruin someone’s day.

Flash recoiled. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.” Then, “At least that explains how you knocked me out,” he said. Peter winced at the memory. 

“Sorry about that,” he said, recalling the incident on the bus. “That actually was an accident.”

Flash waved his hand, very  _ all is forgiven.  _

“Flash,” Peter said carefully, “Only a few people know.”

For a moment, Flash looked  _ offended.  _ “I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

Peter blinked. “Oh,” he said. “I just thought--”

“I always got that Spider-Man’s whole thing was to stay anonymous for, like, safety reasons or whatever. Even if I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t spread your name around.”

Peter stared at him, wide-eyed and surprised. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, yeah. Cool. Thanks.” 

“How did you-- and when did you…” Flash started. “I mean, the powers?”

“Radioactive Spider bite. That trip we took Sophomore year, to the Museum of Natural History.” Peter shoved his hands in his pockets. The tension in his shoulders had mostly disappeared, but he was still standing in Flash’s cold house, re-hashing something he’d vowed to keep secret. “Something must have gotten loose.”

“The spider exhibit,” Flash recalled. “And you just got powers and became a hero?”

“It wasn’t quite that painless,” Peter said. He thought about Ben, dead, on their kitchen floor. “But yeah, basically.”

“And your Stark internship is just stopping bank robberies and aliens?” 

“Sometimes. I mean, I do actually work on projects for Tony. I build some of my own suits, too. But mostly it’s the crime fighting, yeah.” 

“So when you disappeared in Europe?” Flash said. “And on the DC trip.”

“Duty called.” Peter forced a smile. He tried not to think about the Europe trip more than he had to. He’d mostly recovered from that, though it had taken him months. 

“Dude, that’s awesome,” Flash said. “You’re, like, an Avenger. Like, you’ve been cool this entire time.”

Peter tried really hard not to roll his eyes. “I’m not really an avenger,” he said. “I turned Tony down.” 

“But you work with Avengers,” Flash said.

“I… Yeah? I guess. Sometimes. I mean-- I work with Tony all the time, but--”

“You’ve saved my life like three times,” Flash said, sitting down on the edge of the couch. “And I’ve just--”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter said. “I don’t do it so that people won’t be assholes to me.” 

Though, it would be an added bonus. Maybe if people knew who he was, they’d be nice. Then again, if people knew who he was, he’d probably be dead by now. 

“Don’t you get lonely?” Flash asked. Peter tilted his head. “You do everything and no one even notices-- don’t you get lonely?”

Peter opened his mouth. He looked at the walls again, void of any personality or sense of belonging. He looked at Flash, in a t-shirt and khakis, looking out of place in his home. Alone, in a huge house with barren walls.

He understood. At least, he understood a little. 

“At first,” he said, nodding. “I didn’t tell anyone until Tony found me. But now I have people I can reach out to, if I need. That makes it a lot less lonely.” 

He thought about the weeks after Europe. Randomly asking Harley, or Tony, or May questions that only they’d know the answer to. Being relieved, every time, when Harley told him that the first time they’d met Peter had been wearing his stupid  _ if you’re not a part of the solution you’re a part of the precipitate _ shirt, or Tony reminded him that Starlord was from Missouri, or May told him about the time he tried to learn to skateboard and ended up breaking his foot. 

He levelled his gaze with Flash’s. “But I didn’t earn their respect by being an ass. I had to give them a reason to care. Half of this is just being kind to people.” 

“Right,” Flash said, and he looked at the floor.

And the truth was: Peter didn’t think Flash was a bad guy. He was just someone who hadn’t been given enough love to know how to be  _ nice.  _

Peter cleared his throat. “Hey, if we end up needing an intern again by the end of the summer, I’ll let you know, but I think we’re probably going to be trying to clean the place up for a while.” 

“That makes sense,” Flash said. “Is everyone okay?”

Peter swallowed. “Harley’s a little scratched up, but he’ll be fine.” 

“Wait, Peter,” Flash said. He reached out and grabbed Peter’s forearm. Peter half-turned to face him. “I really  _ am  _ sorry.”

Peter smiled without teeth. “I’ll see you around, Flash. Good luck at school.” 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for the anon on Tumblr who, upon seeing me post that I wanted to write this, encouraged me! If you liked this, kudos and comments are always appreciated. You can also find me and come talk to me on Tumblr @dredfulhapiness ! my asks are always open and I'm taking fic requests!


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